Becoming a parent is a transformative experience. Depending on how you were brought up, your approach to raising your child may take one of two forms: you either swear not to repeat the same mistakes or unknowingly commit them again.
Today’s list is more about the latter. We’ve collected responses from a recent Reddit thread in which people shared the parenting mistakes they’ve experienced and later realized they’ve repeated with their own kids.
These replies involve giving a child the “because I said so” treatment, losing patience, and failing to show positive reinforcement, among many others. If you’re a mom or dad yourself, are you guilty of these? Let us know in the comments.
#21
My mother was alternately either over or underprotective as a result of which I developed severe emotional problems and had a real lack of trust and confidence in myself and the world during my teens. Took me a very long time to come to terms with after many disasters. My father wasn’t involved much in my upbringing due to divorce and my mother blocking him out of our lives mostly, it is later that I rekindled my relationship with my father.
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10points
#23
Avoiding talking and confronting complex problems with honesty. Sometimes there are some issues that need to be solved with time, but a good portion of that is understanding where it comes from and confronting the issue.
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9points
#24
Not the answer that you’re looking for but i have two cats that have been healthy up until last month. I have become a neurotic overbearing mess. Not that I’ve ever been a laid back person but this is overboard even for me. If I’m like this over two cats I can’t imagine what I’d be like with children. So this has made me take a step back from having kids.
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8points
#25
Being antisocial with other parents and having it limit my own kids' social circles.
8points
#27
I don't have children but I predict that I'll be a helicopter parent.
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7points
#29
They tried to control the way I think and that's what made me rebellious but as I was an introvert kid I lost and gave my collar in their hands...ended up having no experience and friends.
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6points
#31
We all know this much harsh syllabus, sitting at school all day for kids from 4 is not required at all. We all lagged life skills. But here we are repeating the same for our kids.
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1point
#33
A lot of men have too much denial about the harm of circumcision to even question it, so they end up repeating the trauma on their kids rather than take the emotional hit of admitting they were harmed
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0points